It All Comes Out in the Wash
by Belle1228
Summary: A new laundromat opens in Trenton and Stephanie, Ranger and the rest of the team need to solve a murder before the whole business goes down the drain. Babe (eventually). Rated M for later chapters. Beware for twist and turns :)
1. Taxes and Dirty Laundry

SPOV

For the tenth time tonight I have tried to get comfortable on my couch. I swear this thing could be used as a form of torture in a third world country! I'm at home early in the morning because no one seems to want to be FTA right now, and without someone to chase I really don't have anything to do but sit at home and watch TV or go to my parents and field all of the questions and comments from my Mother. I'll take my torture device, oops I mean couch, any day of the week.

My love life is non existent as of right now. Joe Morelli, my on again/off again boyfriend is off to see the wizard or in this case he's off to see another woman. Speaking of the Wizard, I don't really even want to think about the one person that I automatically think of anytime the word wizard is uttered in my presence. Ranger Manoso, the wizard…the wonderful wizard, has not really been coming around lately. I don't know if it's the fact that he doesn't really want to be around me or he's been too busy saving the world one city at a time. Either way, that makes my love life pretty boring and unsatisfying. Luckily sugar has been a good friend to me and has not abandoned me so far.

As I sat there and pondered my life I heard my phone ring.

"Hello" I say.

"Babe," speak of the devil, it's Ranger.

"What's up? You back in town? Is the world safe once again?" I ask.

"I am, I'll be at your place in 30. I need some help with an account, a female point of view."

"Sure, anytime. See you soon."

I swear he hung up before I even finished my sentence. Part of me wonders if he does the same thing to his Mom when he talks to her. My mother would try to wash my mouth out with soap if I did that to her. Nah, the more I think about it I really believe Mom would continue to talk (harp) for the next 20 minutes before she realized she was talking to dead air. I have actually had conversations where I have put my phone down and gone back and said "Yeah" or "Good" every 10 minutes and she never noticed I was gone.

I go to the bathroom and freshen myself up before Ranger arrives. I change into a pair of jeans and a black t shirt. No sooner do I walk out of my bedroom do I hear the locks tumble on my front door. When Ranger walks in I have to check myself for drool, he's dressed in a pair of black slacks that are hugging every muscle in his legs and a white button up shirt that I swear is custom made just for him.

"What account do you need my help with?" I asked as I crossed the room and made my way back to the couch.

"You know that new laundromat that opened up near Hamilton Township?"

"Yeah, it's really nice. It's almost too nice for Trenton. It's only been open for about two months. Are they getting cameras put in?"

"One of the things is cameras, but they are having issues. A couple of the employees and the owner all feel like they are being watched. We're going to do some security on the place as well. I wanted to get your feel on the cameras and see if your spidey sense picked up on anything. Just throw on your shoes, we're meeting with the owner in 25 minutes."

I began to open my mouth to protest. To tell him he couldn't just tell me to throw on shoes and expect me to be okay with going to meet this lady without putting on more makeup and changing into nicer clothing, but I knew it would be pointless and probably make us late for the meeting so I just went and threw on my shoes. Sometimes you've just got to pick your battles.

S&RS&RS&RS&R

Within 20 minutes we were pulling into the parking lot at the laundromat. I did a quick stroll around the building looking at the entrances and what might be considered blind spots on the outside of the building. Everything looked pretty normal. No doors on either side of the building, a small parking lot in the back with an entrance for employees. Nothing out of the norm.

As I came back around the corner I heard a woman scream and started running into the building right behind Ranger. When we got into the building we saw a lady, 30 years old, just holding her hand over her mouth. Once we got closer we saw what made her scream, in the big industrial washer there was a dead body. The body was twisted and mangled to fit into the machine and had a note pinned to the shirt that said:

**_Two things in life are certain - taxes and dirty laundry. I'm just trying to help you clean up your dirty laundry._**

When I saw her start to get unsteady on her feet I lead Megan back to the office area to help her calm down while Ranger called the team in to process the information and properly move the body. Megan was 30 years old, black hair, brown eyes, about 5'3", 110lbs, and the owner of Folding Fantasy laundromat. I spent the better part of ten minutes just trying to get her to breathe and calm down enough so I get her to talk to me. Once this happened Ranger strolled into the office.

"They tried dusting the washer for fingerprints but there were about 20 different sets total." He said.

"Yeah, we use a chemical that cleans, disinfects, and takes the fingerprints off. I was cleaning the machines when I found Brandon's body." Megan said.

"Who is Brandon?" I asked

"Brandon is my husband, or should I say was my husband?" as she finished her sentence she broke out in tears.

"It's only 9:30 in the morning. Where was Brandon heading today? Did you see him this morning?" Ranger asked.

"Yes, he left about the same time as I did. He took our son, well he's actually my stepson, to school then he was going to come up here and take the deposit to the bank. It doesn't look like the safe has been opened up this morning so I don't know if he ever made it here." Megan said but a lot of it was muffled by sobbing.

"Well Megan, you need to close the store for the day. If you have family in the area I would go suggest that you stay with them until we get some of this sorted out. You need to check on your stepson, and keep us informed if anything else is happening. Our team will be here the better part of the day, and will be running surveillance 24/7 until this is taken care of. The Trenton PD just arrived on the scene, but I will tell them that they can contact you tomorrow for a statement." Ranger said.

"I am going to go to the school to get Justin and head to my parent's house. Thank you for all of your help Mr. Manoso," she turned towards me, "Oh I'm sorry I never got your name." Megan said.

"Stephanie, Stephanie Plum. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you." I said.

With that Megan gathered up her purse and headed out the door. This left us alone in the office with a lot of unanswered questions to try to answer.

_What do you think? My husband and I actually own a laundromat and I thought it would be a different setting for a mystery (don't worry my husband is not in one of our large washers lol) Should I continue? -Nicole_


	2. Market Research

_Not mine as much as I wish. Everything except for the plot belongs to JE. The only other thing I can really claim are my mistakes._

_Thank you for all of the great comments, the plot line is going to be a bit different and as we get further along there will be more "laundromat jargon". As I go forward I am going to be more descriptive….I did go back and fix a few things in the first chapter. _

_For the review that said Stephanie was already referring to Megan by her name before she gave the description or introduced. I'll let you form your own assumption, but I feel that Ranger and Stephanie would talk a little about the account in the car and she would find out the name. OR we can always go with the fact that in a close knit neighborhood, everyone knows everyone and she knew Megan's name from someone like Grandma talking about it. Whatever floats your boat, I was a little vague about that one when I could have been more descriptive. __J_

Chapter 2

**SPOV**

With Megan leaving the building it left a lot of unanswered questions. Normally she would not have been permitted to leave the building without a lot more questioning, but I think even though we never spoke it, Ranger was more worried about her son being harmed and didn't want to chance something happening to him. Even though they've tightened the security at the schools with all of the school shootings in the past years, it still isn't great. The student resource officer that works at Angie's school actually had a child come up behind her and take her gun out of the holster and throw it to another child before she even realized it was no longer on her hip. Needless to say the officer was replaced within a few days, but it's still a scary thought to think that the person that is supposed to be guarding our kids is that unaware.

"Well what do you think?" Ranger asked me.

"At this point I don't think I'm sure. Looking around this place they seemed to have sunk a lot of money into it. None of this equipment is cheap. It seems like everyone is top of the line, including the office furniture. I wonder if there are any partners in the business. If there are someone needs to go talk to them." I said as I walked around the office.

"Let's head into the main part of the building and see if anyone found anything." Ranger said as he grabbed the door knob.

Upon making our way to the washer side of the building I saw three members of the TPD along with Lester, Tank, and Cal. They had already gotten the body out of the washing machine. Except for a few mangled limbs, bruises and a couple of possible broken bones the body looked pretty clean, no pun intended. Whoever did this didn't use a gun since there were no entrance or exit wombs.

"Steph, do you know anything about these washers?" Lester asked me.

"Why would I know anything about them? Just because I don't have an Ella to do my laundry like the rest of the men in black doesn't mean I come to a laundromat every time I have dirty laundry." I shot him a look as I finished my sentence.

"I didn't mean it like that; I just know you do have a washer or dryer so I wondered if you had been here before." He said.

"Nope, but I've got to admit besides seeing them on TV in huge resorts I've never seen washers this big. I wonder how much laundry you can fit into these big ones." I pondered.

"Looking at the front they say they hold 80 pounds of laundry," Tank said coming up behind us "That is a lot of laundry, and that is also the reason there is not a lot of damage to the body. Besides folding the body up at its natural points, it didn't take much to get it into there. I think there was only one broken bone and that may have been from a struggle and not from actually shoving him into the machine."

"The thing I find interesting is the whole saying about taxes and dirty laundry is actually part of the slogan from one of the laundromats in Newark." Cal said, "Someone has done their research. That is not something that most people would say."

"Let's roll out Babe," Ranger said as the rookie from TPD walked away from him. "I want head back to Rangeman and try to get in contact with Megan to see if we can stop by where she is staying and ask her a few questions. Also, I want to make sure Justin is okay."

On the ride back to Rangeman we began talking about the business. Megan and Brandon did not take a traditional route in their marketing. They went a little on the racy, almost crude side of things. It's very surprising that they have done as well with a town full of older, retired individuals considering their marketing campaign. The Burg and a lot of Trenton is not known for its crude sense of humor, even if I found some of the stuff pretty funny.

In the garage Ranger and I went our separate ways. He went straight up to his office and I went to the cubical that always seems to be left open when I'm not working for Rangeman. I wanted to do a little bit of research on Megan and Brandon. I really did not turn up much.

Brandon was 37 years old, had been married three times. One lasted less than a year when he was 18 years old, the other was obviously Justin's mother and it lasted a little over 6 years. Megan and Brandon had been married for close to ten years. The business was split 51%/49% with Brandon holding controlling interest. Justin's mother, Amanda Shaw had been through three custody cases with Brandon in the past 11 years. Each time she lost more and more custody, with the last one resulting in her having to pay child support to him. Justin was only 12 years old and his parents divorced by the time he was 6 months old.

Megan's history didn't show much more than Brandon's. Her family had moved around most of her childhood, a military brat. They settled in Trenton when she was in 13 and have been here ever since. She married Brandon when she was 20 years old and was employed as Justin's nanny for the first 3 months of his life, before Amanda and Brandon divorced. From the look of the paperwork she was the nanny before the paperwork shows there was a separation. Other than that, nothing peaked my interest so I went to take my findings to Ranger's office. I knocked on the door and waited for the okay to enter.

"Anything?" Ranger asked.

"Not really beyond your basic background. The only thing I found kind of interesting is that Megan was Justin's nanny before Brandon got divorced."

"I knew that, when I did the original meeting with Brandon and Megan he introduced her as the babysitter." He said with a smirk.

"Men! They've been married for 10 years and he makes it sound like some cheap porn fantasy."

"Babe"

"Other than the Jerry Springer triangle I didn't find anything else out of the ordinary. Did you get a hold of Megan?"

"Yes, she is coming to the office in an hour with Justin. Why don't I call Ella and we can go up to 7 and have lunch before she gets here?"

"Sounds good, let me run back to the desk and grab my things." I said as I headed out the door then met Ranger at the elevator to go upstairs.

_The next part is going to be pretty lengthy. We're going to dig into everyone's past and find their "dirty laundry". I'm sorry for the somewhat abrupt ending to this chapter, but really there wasn't a better place to end it. _


	3. Down and Dirty

I am overwhelmed with the response on this story. The messages and reviews are wonderful and are what keeps me wanting to write. The next chapter is going to be a lot background, but this one is mostly SMUT. I was not going to write this but Ranger would not leave me along until I wrote it, and he told me that some of you horny bitches out there would like a little bit of smut (I guess he knows I'm a sucker for smut too). Once again…. Not mine – just the plot and mistakes (self edited, so of course I'm going to make mistakes)

Chapter 3

RPOV

We made it up to the apartment just as Ella was leaving. I honestly don't know what I would do sometimes without her. Everyone thinks I'm such a huge stickler for eating healthy, but if it wasn't for Ella I would probably live off sandwiches and take out. My schedule doesn't really leave me much time to cook, so the biggest part of my meals would come with the words cut slit in film on them if I was left to my own devices. Hell I'd probably be worse than Babe, and that's saying a lot.

During lunch we go over more of the information on the case. I just hope that Megan will be able to give us some sort of a lead. With a Laundromat being a public place that is used by multiple people it's really hard to get prints on anything.

"Ranger, what were your feelings on Megan when you first met her?"

"She seemed nice but she was just coming in for a few minutes before she ran to meet with the manager of the Hilton about taking over their account. I probably talked to her for about 5 minutes total. Brandon seemed worried that someone was harassing their staff, he said he doesn't work the front counter very much and really didn't have a great feel for the customer base."

"If it's his business why would he not be working it, especially if it's such a new company? You'd think he'd want to try to get to know the customers."

"Well as he explained it to me, his daytime shift is made up of women because they do a lot of drop off services with clothing and most women do not want a man washing all of their unmentionables. He said there was a Laundromat about 10 miles from here that the owner was accused of sniffing all of the underwear, and customers actually caught him. I have to agree with him, I don't even think I'd want a man handling my underwear. I think it's just a man thing."

"Ranger you don't wear underwear, what are you talking about not wanting a man to handle them?"

"I do sometimes, you want to find out if I have them on today?" I asked with a smile on my face.

"As much as I'd like to we need to be downstairs to meet with Megan in ten minutes."

"Well that gives me enough time to explore and see what is on under those jeans," I pulled her towards me and kiss her hard and deep, "too bad we don't have all afternoon."

Babe began rubbing herself against me as we kissed, if I didn't stop this now not only would I not be able to comfortably meet with Megan but I'd never leave this apartment. After I pulled away her eyes were glassy and she looked a little flustered. I checked my watch and I had another 5 minutes before we had to attempt to make our way downstairs so I turned her around quickly and pulled her back towards my back. I began roughly grabbing at her boobs pinching her nipples as we went. Before she really had a chance to protest I quickly unbuttoned her jeans and stuck my hand down the front of them. I rubbed and pinched until I gave her a quick release, when I finished she was so wet I could barely stand it. I guided her back towards the couch and let her rest while I went and changed from my dress pants to a pair of cargos and a t shirt.

"I'm going to head down to the conference room on 4, there is an old uniform in the closet. Clean up and meet me down there, I really need your help with this." As I turned to leave I gave her a peck on the lips and headed downstairs to meet with the client. I've got to figure out how to deal with my feelings for Babe because right now my erection is poking dangerously close to my zipper, I swear I can feel the teeth of the zipper on the tip of my dick.


	4. Fantasies

_Not mine – no profits being made._

_The comment about Ranger needing to know there is a reason people wear underwear made me crack up. Personally if Ranger wants to go commando who am I to stop him? _

Chapter 4

SPOV

What the fuck just happened? One minute we're talking about the case and the next minute he's got his hands down my pants. It all happened so quick I couldn't even form a response, and I think that was his intention all along. It had been so long since I've had a social orgasm it didn't take long. I don't think it ever takes long when the wizard shows me his skills, but it really left me thinking about what all of that meant. He didn't even get off, so it wasn't a tit for tat type thing. Some things are left to think about at a later time, so I went and cleaned myself up the best I could and changed into the uniform from the closet before I headed down to the conference room.

As I made my way to the door downstairs I saw Lester talking a young boy upstairs. I was guessing it was Justin.

"Hey beautiful, I'm taking Justin upstairs to the break room to play video games. The kid has some cheats for some of the games we have so I figured I'd pick his brain so maybe next time I can actually beat Tank and Bobby."

"Well have fun. It's nice to meet you Justin." I said as I made my way past them and into the conference room.

"Megan, Stephanie is going to sit in with us today. She's got some of the best instincts I've ever seen and I'm hoping she can pick up on something that the rest of us maybe overlooking." Ranger said as I sat next to him at the table.

Looking at Megan you could tell the day had taken a toll on her. The only thing that seemed a bit off was that I thought someone who had lost their husband less than 12 hours prior would look a little worse for wear. She didn't look happy by any means, but she didn't look completely devastated by any means either. Maybe she just wasn't someone who showcased their emotions, maybe she was the type of person who broke down in the privacy of their own home.

"Megan, can you tell me a little bit about your marriage?" Ranger said.

"Not a lot to tell. We've been married for 10 years last month, together close to 11. Brandon's ex wife worked for my parents when I was younger and that is how I met Brandon." She said.

"Before you two started dating did anything happen between you?" I asked.

"Heavens no. I was 16 when we met and he was 23. I would see Brandon a couple of times a month when Amanda worked for my parents and I thought he was the biggest asshole on the face of the earth. Arrogant and just not someone I wanted to be around. We actually didn't really become friends until right before Justin was born. I was also dating someone for the first two years I knew him, so there was no interest on my end."

"How did you two become an item?" Ranger asked.

"Well when Justin was around two months old Brandon and I went out to dinner while Amanda was at work. Brandon's parents were watching Justin, so I had the night off. After dinner Brandon begins telling me that he's leaving Amanda because he's a horrible mother and does not want Justin to grow up in that type of environment. Later that evening he kissed me and it blossomed from there."

"What can you tell me about Amanda?" I asked.

"Amanda is a complete and utter piece of shit, please excuse my language. Overall if you look at her she's not a bad person, but she's always reminded me of the type of mother who eats their young. She doesn't have a maternal bone in her body. The only time she has really wanted anything to do with Justin is when she is around other people, when she wants people to think she's a good mother. I've been that child's mother all of his life, not her. It wasn't until the past couple of months that she has tried to make more of an effort to be in his life."

"Any clues as to why?" Ranger asked.

"She has a new boyfriend. Someone that wants to be a father so she has decided that she can give him a son by trying to make up for lost time with Justin. Give the guy the whole instant family."

"Do you know the boyfriend's name? Have you met him?" I asked.

"He's come with her to pick up Justin a couple of times for her visitation. He actually seems like a pretty nice guy. I feel sorry for the stupid bastard if he thinks he's actually going to get himself a decent wife and mother out of her. I think the guys last name is Morelli, I know the first name is Joe."

Just then Lester and Justin entered the room, keeping me from screaming.

"The kid showed me some pretty good hacks," Lester said.

"Well he's a freaking computer genius like his Daddy. My brain is not wired like that, I was always better at English and history in school." Megan said.

A few minutes later we concluded our discussions so Justin and Megan could head back to her parents. We really didn't want to go over the information with Justin in the room, he didn't need to hear any of that. Lester, Ranger, and I all sat in the conference room for the next twenty minutes going through information and trying to figure out what our next move was.

"I think I was right in my assumption of this being like a Jerry Springer triangle" I said.

"I've got respect for the guy. Any guy who can leave their wife for the 20 year old babysitter has some skills." Lester said.

"What is it with you guys? You're all a bunch of perverts! You hear about a guy with the babysitter and it turns into a plot line for a porn film. If Brandon was a cable installer and came to run cable in the house and that was how they got together I can almost guarantee Megan wouldn't be going around making it sound like that." I said.

"Beautiful you know an awful lot about plot lines to porn movies. I guess we know what you've been doing with your spare time since Morelli is history."

With that I smacked Lester as hard as I could on the arm, not that it really hurt him but it made me feel a little better. Ranger watched the whole conversation with little twinkle in his almost black eyes and a smirk on his face. I think the bastard actually thought that was what I was doing in my spare time!

"I'm going back up to the desk to do some research. I want to look into Amanda a bit more. I really have no need to look into her boyfriend. I will bring what I find to your office."

As I left I heard Lester telling Ranger that he should "fill that void" left in my life. Ranger hit his head and told him "I can't do that, I don't want to fuck things up again. I'm trying to get her to see a different side of me." The more I'm around Ranger I realize he's kind of an enigma. The other thing that I realize is I really wish that instead of a quick orgasm before this meeting that I wish he would have just thrown me on the nearest flat surface and screwed my brains out. Maybe I need to make a detour to the break room and see if any of my stash is still there before I start my research.

_I've decided to break down the backgrounds a bit more. Amanda and Joe are coming next. How many of you even though about Joe being the boyfriend? _


End file.
